Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Emperor and the Wolf enjoyed a rather harmonious co-habitation. They cooked, they cleaned, they indulged in acts of whimsy. They hung floral curtains in the kitchen, they sewed little cat figurines from scraps of yellow felt. Life tended towards the idyllic – the occasional shared bong beneath the dappled light of the fig tree, two glasses of san pellegrino aranciata to soothe the throat. Sounds blissful, doesn’t it? It was paradise, in fact. Cue trouble.

The Emperor had a worrying propensity for downing valium. The Wolf oft moonlighted as an apostrophe police-officer. Both factors caused much tension in their otherwise perfect, Jolie-Pitt-esque relationship. The Wolf spent many an eve traipsing the streets with butterfly-net in hand, performing sting operations upon the hapless chalk-boards of our city’s fruit and veg purveyors, salvaging those rogue apostrophes which she would then store in one of many pre-sterilised jam jars kept on the living room mantelpiece. The buzzing and crackling of so many madly-spiralling captive punctuation marks made a sound much like white noise at some unholy decibel. The terrible cacophony oft kept the Emperor awake as he lay abed, gnashing his teeth and turning circles like a lazy susan. Thus the choofin’ of the valium in a vain attempt for oblivion, and the terrible knotting of the Wolf’s carefully laundered floral sheets.

Upon many occasions, when the Wolf returned from a particularly bountiful trek, eighty-odd apostrophes flailing within her net, the Emperor would moan, ‘Why? Why persevere with this madness?’

To which the Wolf would reply, with a tremor creeping into her husky voice, ‘I am a Wolf. My senses are keen. You wouldn’t understand.’

And with that she would crawl beneath one of the less sweat-riddled corners of sheet, and the Emperor would hide his valium beneath his pillow, and durst say no more. For there was one thing that the Emperor was afraid of more than anything in the world bar making a fatal error between crutches and crotches at his local pharmaceutical dispensary store. And that was that someday the Wolf might maul him to death.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. In fact, it sounded less like a knock and more like a scrabbling of paws. The Emperor gulped. The sound struck fear into his soul. He was in fact rather a fearful fellow. What with a house full of demons he’d grown accustomed that sickening gnawing of the stomach. He simply shuddered, vomited a little, and made his way to his door that was now shaking on its hinges.

‘I’ve asked them nicely to leave, honestly I have!’ Whined the Emperor.

‘You need to kick them to the kerb.’ Said the wolf.

‘But they just hang around and demand more poetry! It’s the only thing that satiates them!’

‘Have you ever thought to offer them a drink?’

The Emperor looked quite confuzzled.

‘Can’t say I have.’ He said.

But the wolf was already pouring another two large vodka cranberries, double shots, tall glasses, slice of lime.

‘Hey, freaks!’ She said. The demons turned to her. Did I mention they had ugly little faces? They were now made all the uglier in their fury. They snatched the drinks nonetheless, and downed them with a ferocity that would have made Beelzebub proud.

Their eyes grew wide and their jaws dropped. ‘More, more!’ They hollered.

‘Sorry.’ The wolf waggled an empty bottle in their faces. ‘We’re fresh out.’

The demons looked horrified.

And they fled like the sky.

And if you ever see a pair of disgustingly ugly faced little demons sitting on the kerb somewhere necking it from a pair of goon sacks, kick them in the knees for me.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Adonis awoke to the sound of a sparrow hurling itself against his bedroom window in a desperate bid for escape.

‘Come now, Juliet,’ said Adonis, ‘freedom may be sweet but chocolate sauce is just as good.’ He grasped the little birdy by its scrawny neck and dipped it’s beak into the jar of Chocolate Lovin’ he kept especially beside his posturepedic double bed for you know what.

‘Eat up.’ He said. ‘This is your breakfast and we’ve got a big day ahead of us. Why, I’ve got the feeling I might meet the one today.’

Juliet did a little sparrow-splutter. ‘Gach, gachgh.’ She said.

‘Don’t get too excited though, Juliet,’ Adonis warned. ‘The individual of my dreams wont just pop up on any street corner asking for $3.00 for a soft drink to soothe the throat. If I want to find the treasure of my red-blooded heart, why, I’ll just have to search high and low for it.’

‘Eep.’ Said Juliet. Adonis tipped out the amethyst and rose-quartz charms that he kept in a little embroidered draw-string pouch to bring him inner peace and good times in the sack, respectively. Then he popped Juliet inside. Thus Juliet’s pitiful cry of ‘eep.’

‘I believe you will serve as a better good luck talisman, Juliet. You’re small, pretty and soft. I feel like I could crush you within one fist. You’ll do quite nicely.’

Adonis strode towards his full-length mirror, still completely in the buff, and he liked what he saw. ‘Shame,’ he muttered to himself as he pulled on a singlet and some teeny-weeny little shorts. He did hate to cover it up. The statue of David had sure as hell never had to wear pants.

Having primped his hair til it sat just so, and brushed his teeth til there were flecks all over his singlet and he had good excuse to take it off, Adonis was set. He put the small ying-yang pouch that contained Juliet into his pocket, and strutted out the door. The morning was perhaps a little wet and rain-splattered, but that did nothing to sway Adonis’s mood. Nor did Juliet’s beak digging into his left arsecheek just a little.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

It was a wet, rain-splattered morning and Lord Beelzebub (aka Lord Beez) was feeling quite morose. He rolled over in his posturepedic double bed and moaned. He stretched his arms out and felt nothing but the firmness of box-springed plushness. He felt, suddenly, horribly, desperately, lonely. 'I'm sick of sleeping alone,' Lord Beez muttered to himself. 'And, damn it, a housecat will not fill the void.' 'You already have a cat,' purred the Mongoose, viciously. 'And I would rather lick my own testicles than share a bed with you, Lord Beez.'At this, Lord Beez snorted. 'Mongoose,' he said, 'your proclivity for the licking of testicles is pure and simply the very exact reason that I refuse to share a bed with you. Do not try to turn the stable-table on me now.' And as for the Mongoose being a cat, Lord Beez in fact wasn't quite sure what the Mongoose was. It was a beast, that much was certain. A beast bearing at least a base similarity to a particularly large and particularly malevolent cat. A black slavering beast with tufts of scabbed fur intermittently peppering its raw mouldy flesh, its eyes red and flashing and its countenance brooding, the stench of petrol and burned rubber emanating from its evil pits. In short, the Mongoose was an obscenity never to be permitted to sully Lord Beez's beige cotton sheets. Lord Beez arose.

'Fuck the world,' he read aloud from his inspirational diary. He promised himself that next year he would make sure to purchase an inspirational diary that was a little truer to name. He sighed. He felt depressed. The day had not begun well. In an attempt to lift his spirits, Lord Beez poured himself some. Bacardi and mango juice. It went down quite nicely with some Special K and a few sliced strawberries. Then he opened yesterday's paper and flipped to his horoscope. If there was one thing bound to bring Beez cheer, it was wallowing in the pig-in-mud happiness of the goat-of-the-sea, that fishy tailed Satanic spawn of gluttony and glee, of revelry and rebellion. 'Capricorn,' read Beez aloud. 'On Tuesday, you will meet a sexy stranger on your lunchbreak.'With trepidation, Beez glanced at his inspirational calender. Joy of joys! It was indeed that fateful day, the day of lost souls and lonely sailors, Tuesday, oh glorious Tuesday! A shiver of pure glee shot up Beez's spine. Was it true?Could it be? Beez had the urge to simply sprint out the door, however it is worth mentioning that up until this point, Lord had remained absolutely starkers. Unclothed or otherwise, Lord Beez was indeed a handsome specimen. He was lanky and limbre, with a very naughty head of dirty blonde hair and a thousand-watt smile. But his dress sense was second to none. He had a knack of always, without fail, selecting the perfect t-shirt. Today, he whipped a purple and neon number off the pile. 'DRINK TIL HE'S CUTE,' the block letters boldly proclaimed. 'Bring it on,' murmured Beez. He longed for an indentation in his posturepedic that wasn't Mongoose-sized and didn't come with a bonus piss-stain. Lord Beez experienced a flutter, a sliver of a glimmer of a butterfly-jitter-bug-duckling-squeak-quaver of the tiniest morning-dew-kissed ray of hope. He felt pretty fucking amazing.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

She used to be the Dog, but found the moniker had a rather negative undertone that disagreed with her. Other things that disagreed with her were milk, spagghetti sauce, and sushi retailers. But most of all, it was the frequent bark of ‘Dog,’ upon her entry into a room that irked her like a black stain of squid ink down a new work shirt. Working in the Squiddery was a drain on her creativity, but that’s besides the point. She had enough creative juices for the purposes of renaming herself, and this is the crux of the thing.

‘Fox’ was a little too overused as far as names went, she felt. Everybody these days wanted to be a fox, but they were mostly just ferrets, stoats, and weasels. Sometimes polecats.

‘Minx’ sounded like a fur coat or a blanket or something, and was thus vetoed.

And so, the hero of this story became dubbed the Wolf, for little other reason than that she used to enjoy making dream-catchers as a child. She liked the whole ‘when there are no fish you will realise money cannot be pan-fried in butter and sprinkled with delicious herbs’ school of thought. Wolves tied into this conceptually, she thought, as she had seen them on the kind of t-shirts that are sold in the sort of stores that are also purveyors of gemstones, window-decals, and figurines of Beelzebub. It all seemed inter-connected, somehow.

The Wolf liked to do your general canine things like killing pigeons in the park. She liked to paint her nails gaudy colours and laugh at other’s misfortunes.

She liked to howl at the moon.

Chase tails.

And dream whilst thrusting her little paws about and gnashing her little teeth.

The sort of shops that sell gemstones and window-decals and figurines of Beelzebub also sell implements and instruments for analysing dreams.

Cappuccinos taste like rays of sunDipped in love and pirate’s rumGelati tastes like ice and snowAnd cuddles from an eskimoWhilst noodles taste quite indistinctLike tear-stained letters weeping inkPeople look like piles of scumSelf-imploding, one by onePigeons have such dirty beaksThey make me falter when I speakI fear they might peck out my eyesI fear they might fill up the skiesWith a howling messTheir speckled breastsThe colour of lintAnd eyeballs that glintThe fever of deathUpon their breathBut you are nearSo I shan’t fearThose scavengers of chips and beerFor you are the sunThe only oneTo fill the voidsLeft by asteroidsYou make me feelLike apple peelUpon the streetSo very sweetLaying there like apple peels doSpelling the initialsI, and U.